By Jenn Green

The chance of detecting extra terrestrial life is now greater than ever before, Lord Martin Rees told scientists two weeks ago at a Royal Society conference in London. The meeting discussed current developments in the search for alien life and its consequences for science and society.

Lord Rees, President of the society, claims that with new technology it will now be possible to detect earth-like planets orbiting other stars, focusing the search for extra terrestrials.

“Were we to find life, even the simplest life, elsewhere that would clearly be one of the great discoveries of the 21st Century”, he said.

He told the audience that if life was discovered in outer space he suspected it would be in intelligent forms that we would not be able to conceive.

“There could be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity, beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee”, he said.

However Dr Lewis Dartnell, astrobiologist and author of the book ‘Life in the Universe’, thought that the difference between humans and aliens could be starker than this, as intelligent life would have evolved somewhere in the galaxy over the last four or five billion years.

“It would not even be the comparison between chimpanzees and humans, it would be between humans and something we possibly could not even conceive, and maybe will not even be able to recognise.”

“If we come across an intelligent species they would appear like Gods to us,” explains Dartnell. “They would have such advanced technology we would not be able to distinguish it from magic.”